I think what you’re having trouble with is the term “flesh.” For Paul it simply doesn’t mean what it means to us. It does not mean, for Paul, the skin and all the stuff that makes up our bodies. Insetead, the “flesh” is a kind of cosmic/mystical feature of our being which is susceptible of sin and therefore the part of us that alienates us from God. Paul would never say that hte “flesh” of Jesus was raised from the dead, or that our flesh will be raised. It is his “body” that was (and our “bodies” that will be), not his/our flesh. The body is not made up of flesh for him. Flesh and body are two different things.

But Paul went to visit with Peter and James, who in the account in the Bible WERE at the Thomas event. I do not believe that any of this is historical, but for the sake of examining consistency in the story, why would Paul think that the “flesh” (the missing, wounded flesh body with the earthly need to eat) body was instead some kind of “spiritual” perfect body? Since even in his own words, Paul did not “see” (even in a vision) the body (flesh or spiritual) before the ascension? If we are to believe that the “flesh” body is not necessary as a component of the spiritual body, then when Jesus ascended what became of the “flesh” body? How could anyone witness such an event as the ascension and not describe in detail EXACTLY what happened and tell everyone? One would think that James and Peter would have been bursting with this info, since the Bible says that this event happened in front of them. To me this is information is vital for the Christian who thinks that they are going to get a spiritual body. Is the flesh body needed to convert it to a spiritual one or not? If it is needed then, decomposition, cremation etc. matter don’t they? If the “flesh” body is not needed to transform or receive a spiritual body, then why did the “flesh” body of Jesus disappear from the tomb and then reappear to the 11? I am trying my best to use “flesh” in the sense that you described above in these questions.

I haven’t read his book yet, so I can’t really comment on it. But Paul’s views of what happens when you die have always struck me as either inconsistent or in the process of developing. There’s not a clear-cut solution to his views….

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By: Xeronimo74 https://ehrmanblog.org/paul-and-the-resurrection-of-the-flesh-for-members/#comment-5313
Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:38:06 +0000http://ehrmanblog.org/?p=3026#comment-5313Bart, I’ve just finished reading James Tabor’s new book about Paul: what do you make of his suggestion that Paul thought the souls/spirits of the dead would be immediately ‘resurrected’ into these new, heavenly, glorious, imperishable, spiritual bodies (whatever those are actually really supposed to be) without having their rotting corpses restored and their souls ‘latched back onto’ them first?
1 Cor 15 and other verses in other letters of Paul seem to support this. And this could explain how his earliest followers could believe/claim that Jesus resurrected, even in the presence of his corpse (a supposed knowledge that got lost when Jewish Christianity died out after the fall of Jerusalem).
Ok, such a resurrection is probably different from the traditional ‘bodily resurrection’ in the sense of reanimated corpses coming out of tombs but why have the corpses be restored only to then completely change them so they’re not recognizable anymore anyway (if they were recognizable then you’d have to answer uncomfortable questions like: if someone dies as a baby will they be resurrected as a baby?).
Also, the soul/spirit is the part that endures between death and ‘resurrection’, right? The body dies/rots but the soul/spirit only sleeps in Sheol (or Heaven?), waiting (unchanged) for its resurrection into a better body.
On the other hand those still alive at the ‘Second Coming’ on the other hand would have their current bodies immediately changed (with the soul/spirit unchanged) into these better bodies, without having to die first.
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By: Bart Ehrman https://ehrmanblog.org/paul-and-the-resurrection-of-the-flesh-for-members/#comment-4916
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:36:25 +0000http://ehrmanblog.org/?p=3026#comment-4916In reply to RParvus.

Good question. My sense is that by the time we have Gnostics (after Paul’s day) the terms of the debate had shifted, so that it was no longer a debate over whether the pneumatic or the somatic body had been raised (Paul’s debate) but over whether the sarx and the pneuma are both raised or just the pneuma (the debate between the proto-orthodox and the gnostics).

I think I sidetracked you by my misuse of the term “proto-orthodox”. Let me try one more time. What is the difference between:

A — Resurrection of PNEUMA ONLY (gnostic)
and
B– Resurrection of a body that is COMPOSED ONLY OF PNEUMA (i.e., the spiritual body of 1 Corinthians 15 as explained by the Martin quote from pp. 126-27 of his “The Corinthian Body)?

That is to say, what additional stuff gets resurrected by A but not by B (or vice versa)?